Nisha Rathode (Editor)

Janus Friis

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Nationality
  
Danish

Role
  
Entrepreneur

Name
  
Janus Friis


Net worth
  
US$ 1.3 billion (2012)

Occupation
  
Entrepreneur

Janus Friis S omfattende er Janus Friis vs Aurasagen Ekstra Bladet

Born
  
June 26, 1976 (age 48) (
1976-06-26
)
Copenhagen, Denmark

Known for
  
Co-founder of Skype, KaZaA & Rdio

Similar People
  
Niklas Zennstrom, William Henry Draper III, Timothy C Draper, Christina Hembo

Organizations founded
  
Joost, Skype Technologies

Midemnet 2008 conversation with janus friis


Janus Friis ([ˈjæːnus ˈfʁiːˀs]; born 26 June 1976 in Copenhagen) is a Danish entrepreneur best known for co-founding the file-sharing application Kazaa, and the peer-to-peer telephony application Skype. In September 2005, he and his partner Niklas Zennström sold Skype to eBay for $2.6B. Friis has maintained ownership interest in Skype through Silver Lake Partners, which sold Skype to Microsoft for $8.5 billion, in May 2011.

Contents

Janus Friis La biografia di Janus Friis e Niklas Zennstrom FASTWEB

Friis and Zennström also developed Joost - an interactive software application for distributing TV shows and other forms of video content over the Web. The assets of this service were sold to Adconion Media Group in November 2009. Independently, Friis founded video streaming startup Vdio in 2011.

Friis and Ahti Heinla founded Starship Technologies in 2014, to develop small self-driving delivery robots.

Janus Friis wwwmathewingramcomworkwpcontentuploadsFriisjpg

Seesmic Day 68: Founders in London


Career

Janus Friis Janus Friis39 utrolige liv Danmark wwwbtdk

Friis had no formal higher education, dropping out of high school before starting a job at the help desk of CyberCity, one of Denmark’s first Internet service providers. He met Zennström in 1996. At that time, Zennström headed Tele2 in Denmark, and Friis was hired to run its customer support. Friis and Zennström worked together at Tele2 to launch get2net, another Danish ISP, and the portal everyday.com.

After this, the partners decided to leave Tele2. Friis moved into Zennström's small apartment in Amsterdam in January 2000 where they started developing KaZaA, the company responsible for the most popular software for use with the FastTrack file sharing network protocol. The FastTrack protocol itself is also codesigned by Friis.

From the success of KaZaA’s peer-to-peer technology the duo co-founded Joltid, a software company developing and marketing peer-to-peer solutions and peer-to-peer traffic optimization technologies to companies.

Friis is also co-founder of Altnet, a network that sells commercial music to KaZaA users.

Friis founded the online music streaming service Rdio with Zennstroem in 2010. It filed for bankruptcy in November 2015 and announced the sale of assets to Pandora Radio for $75 million.

Friis and Ahti Heinla founded Starship Technologies in 2014, to develop small self-driving delivery robots. In September 2016, the robots took the streets in San Francisco in a test authorized by the city.

Awards

Friis was named in Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people in 2006.

In 2006 Janus Friis got the prestigious award “IT-prisen” ("The IT Prize") in his home country, given by the Danish IT industry and IDG, for his work and innovation.

He and Zennström were also the co-recipients of the 2006 Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award, given to business and individuals who have used information technology in a way that changed an industry or society as a whole.

Personal life

He was engaged to Danish recording artist Aura Dione but the couple split up in April 2015.. Several years after their engagement he undertook legal stalking on Dione , having engaged a legal team and private investigators to track her movement.

References

Janus Friis Wikipedia


Similar Topics